Scattered Episode 29: The National DNA Data Bank Program – Interview with Ingrid Muhlig

Ingrid Muhlig is the manager of DNA operations at the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains (NCMPUR) in Canada. The National Missing Persons DNA Program was launched in 2018 and is delivered by two existing programs within the RCMP.  The National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains (NCMPUR) and the National DNA Data Bank (NDDB) were created to help identify missing and unidentified persons through DNA profiling. 

In this episode we talk about:

• How DNA profiles are uploaded to national databases, and profile comparisons are done automatically at the national level to check for possible matches between missing persons and unidentified remains cases.
• New technologies, like YSTR and mitochondrial DNA, that allow for degraded remains to still be analyzed.
• Reporting missing loved ones to local police is key to create the links between missing person and unidentified remains cases.
• How historical missing persons cases presented a challenge due to needing updated consent forms for older samples and profiles.
• That over 700 unidentified remains cases currently need identification in Canada.
  The DNA program has provided 90 “putative identifications” through DNA matches since 2018.
• International searches can now be conducted through databases like Interpol’s I-Familia to search for missing Canadians abroad.
• Canada’s vast and variable geography, from cities to remote areas, presents diverse scenarios for how people can go missing.

Kudos to everyone involved in the background who make this program possible and successful. Ingrid would like to thank the police investigators, everyone at NCMPUR, and the NDDB Missing Person Unit (MPU). 

More information about some items mentioned in the interview can be found here:

• Canada’s Missing: https://www.canadasmissing.ca/index-eng.htm
• National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains (NCMPUR): https://www.canadasmissing.ca/about-ausujet/index-eng.htm
• National DNA Data Bank (NDDB): https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/forensics/national-dna-data-bank
• Some introductory information on STR, YSTR, mitochrondrial profiling : https://innocencecommission-nc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/understanding-forensic-dna.pdf

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Notes from the start

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Transcript

Yvonne Kjorlien: So, Ingrid, I’m gonna get you to introduce yourself because you know you best. And then you can say your last name for me too, so I won’t mispronounce it.

Ingrid Muhlig: So, my name is Ingrid Muhlig and I’m the manager of DNA operations for the National Center of Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains, so NCMPUR. You know the RCMP, we like our acronyms so it’s that NCMPUR. I will try my hardest not to fall back into all the acronyms but, by all means, stop me asked me what it is. If I do say one.

Yvonne Kjorlien: And you do you what? That’s exactly what I thought when I was writing up the little sort of outline of what we could talk about — like, is what I’m talking about what I think I’m talking about because there’s a lot of acronyms going on.

Ingrid Muhlig: Yup, yup.

Yvonne Kjorlien: All right. Tell me a little bit about your role. You’re a manager of a big unit, it sounds like.

Ingrid Muhlig: It’s actually a very small unit. National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains is actually a unit of approximately 20 people. But those of us that are responsible for the National Missing Persons DNA Program — there’s two of us, that I’m the manager, I have and also a data, our DNA analyst who does the authorizing of DNA with, and she will speak with the investigators and go over the files make recommendations — so our side of the house, it’s National Missing Persons DNA program is actually, we’re partnered with the NDDB to steward this program.

Yvonne Kjorlien: NDDB. All right.

Ingrid Muhlig: National DNA Databank.

Yvonne Kjorlien: All right.

Ingrid Muhlig:  Yeah, and so we take care of mostly the administrative items: logging the information about the case, making recommendations to the investigator, finding out what’s available in regards to DNA, and getting an idea about the case to make those recommendations. And then the NDDB accepts the submissions that we’ve authorized, and they’ll process them and they do the science stuff of processing the DNA and reviewing it, uploading it to CODIS, and then, if associations occur, writing those reports, those reports come back to NCMPUR, and we’ll release into the investigators. Also to the legislation, the legislation that governs how we operate is under DNA Identification Act. And the DNA Identification Act also states that there has to be periodic reviews. So we really, on the NCMPUR side, we manage the life cycle of that DNA profile.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Okay, so if you could take me back a step.

Ingrid Muhlig: Sure.

Yvonne Kjorlien: In just my little preliminary, my own little investigation of websites —

because that’s called research these days — it sounds like the DNA program is very new. It just started in 2018.

Ingrid Muhlig: right

Yvonne Kjorlien: And it’s part of the overall missing persons and unidentified remains unit?

Ingrid Muhlig: It’s a program within the National Center, that it’s one of the services we provide to investigators, medical examiners or coroner’s office. So the National Center for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains is a national program and it provides services to investigators, medical examiners, Corners across Canada. So we’re really an assist and we assist with different services and one of those being the DNA program.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Got it. Okay. Now, from that perspective, just because I don’t know who’s listening out there and what they know, and it’s something that I learned and in talking to when your colleagues from the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains group, that things just don’t happen. Like investigators find some remains, efforts are made to identify them and they are, despite efforts, they are then classified as Unidentified. So that doesn’t just magically appear in your database. There is a process that the medical examiner or the coroner has to go through to then log that in the National Database, correct?

Ingrid Muhlig: Right. So typically when remains are located, they’re immediately put into CPIC and that – all police agencies across at Canada have access to it, they have the ability to search against it too, so if they have a missing person and want to search for potential remains, they have that capability within CPIC.  

What happens with our Center and our database — we call it MCMPUR, which is Missing Children, Persons and Unidentified Remains — I know you’ve spoken to Kevin about this database — what happens is when those investigators the remains into CPIC, it automatically feeds any body entries or any missing persons directly to our database.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Okay!  

Ingrid Muhlig: Then our database has some algorithms, which it starts doing comparisons of whatever has been entered into what’s already in that database and it continues to do comparisons to anything new that’s added.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Okay. But the search in CPIC does have to be done.

Ingrid Muhlig: The entry into CPIC does have to be done.

Yvonne Kjorlien: The entry does.

Ingrid Muhlig: And that is a requirement to participate in the DNA program. And that’s best practices that we preach to all police agencies, medical examiners, corner’s offices is that you need to enter your unidentified remains into this database.

Yvonne Kjorlien: